Conservatives have lost touch with voters: poll

After eight years in the Ottawa bubble, has the Harper government lost touch with the country? All indications would suggest it has.

Confidence that the country is moving in the ‘right’ direction has reached new lows. Confidence in the stewardship of this government is lower still.

At the same time, Prime Minister Stephen Harper finds nearly two-in-three voters disapproving of his job as PM and his party has shed over one-third of the supporters that provided the Conservatives a majority in 2001.

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At just 26 points in a national poll taken late last week, Harper’s party is lagging well behind the revitalized Liberals, which has seen a stable lead develop since Justin Trudeau took office. At 10 points back of the Liberals, Harper now only has to cast his gaze sideways to see a resurgent NDP in a virtual tie, with their leader, Thomas Mulcair, showing impressive gains in approval and party support.

These poll results not only cast doubt on whether Harper can recapture a second majority — they raise the spectre of the Conservatives not even winning Official Opposition status.

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All of the appropriate disclaimers must be recited here. The CPC are best at getting out their vote. The election is still far away. Trudeau and Mulcair seem to be battling over the same liberal voters and vote-splitting could still favour Harper’s Conservatives, who have shown shrewd political acumen and resilience before. And let’s not forget the power of incumbency, which has led to come-from-behind victories by a number of “doomed” premiers in the past year.

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But go beyond the surface indicators and look at the deeper currents in Canadians’ political thinking, and you see a future for the federal Conservatives that is, at best, stormy.

Normally, the speech from the throne produces little excitement among voters. This throne speech might be different, as it marks the start of the 2015 election season.

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During the 1990s and early part of the 2000s it wasn’t unusual to see both national direction and federal direction scored positively by Canadians on a 2-to-1 ratio compared with those saying we were headed in the wrong direction. Indeed, Harper enjoyed excellent scores on these key indicators in the aftermath of this 2008 victory.

Coming out of the last election the country was pretty evenly split on national direction — but those numbers have eroded significantly since then. Confidence in the direction of the country has fallen precipitously and only 37 per cent think national direction is on-track. Fewer than one-in-three polled approve of the federal government’s direction.